MINNEAPOLIS—The Vikings were painfully aware of their two biggest defensive needs long before they had limped to a pitiful end in last year’s 3-13 season.

Quality depth at cornerback was a must. So, too, was a free safety with toughness, elite athleticism, an innate football sense and the ability to create the kind of game-changing plays the team hadn’t seen from the back end in years.

Harrison Smith has brought a new attitude to the Vikings' secondary. (AP Photo)

What they needed was, well, Notre Dame safety Harrison Smith.

“We had him at the Senior Bowl,” said Vikings coach Leslie Frazier, whose staff coached the North squad. “We got to see him up close, get a feel for him. We knew this was our guy. We had him targeted, but it was a matter of would we be able to get him?”

The Vikings had the third overall pick and a need at left tackle. So they couldn’t trade too far down. They decided behind the scenes that they would eat their vegetables by selecting Southern Cal left tackle Matt Kalil. Then they’d figure out a way to get Smith as their dessert, too.

It wouldn’t be easy. Vikings general manager Rick Spielman was starting to hear that Smith wouldn’t last until the Vikings’ second pick at No. 35 overall. And with so many gaping holes to fill, he didn’t want to be stuck short-handed on picks in the later rounds.

That’s when Spielman’s pre-draft smokescreen paid off. His acting job created just enough confusion to make some of his peers wonder whether the Vikings wanted take Kalil, Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon or LSU cornerback Morris Claiborne. All three positions were major areas of need for the Vikings.

The Browns, who were scheduled to pick No. 4 overall, obviously knew the Vikings wouldn’t take Alabama running back Trent Richardson. But they didn’t want to risk Spielman trading the pick to a team that would. So the Browns gave Spielman picks in the fourth, fifth and seventh rounds to move down one spot and take Kalil, the player they coveted all along.

The extra picks gave Spielman the ammo he would need to trade back into the first round and grab Smith, which he did at No. 29 overall. To move up six spots, Spielman gave up the 35th overall pick and a fourth-rounder.

“I’ve had people from other teams that were below us tell me they would have taken Harrison. No question,” Frazier said. “And if we don’t get him, everything would be different because the safety crop was really thin. Getting Harrison made a huge difference in the future of our team.”

In a span of 25 picks, the Vikings turned two of their biggest weaknesses—blind-side protection for Christian Ponder and a playmaker at free safety—into what certainly appears to be strengths for many years to come. Kalil and Smith have started all 15 games and excelled on a team that’s already tripled last year’s win total and can clinch the NFC’s sixth playoff seed with a win over the Packers at Mall of America Field on Sunday.

Smith, whose 15 starts is a franchise record for a rookie safety, is third on the team in tackles with 98. He has a sack, a fumble recovery, 11 passes defensed and three interceptions. Two of those interceptions were returned for touchdowns that pushed the team toward victory at critical moments when the Vikings’ offensive ineptness had caused a shift in momentum.

The other interception came in a loss at Green Bay. But the nature of the interception brought a smile to the faces of veterans who have grown tired of being carved up by Aaron Rodgers and his arsenal of receivers.

“It’s amazing how much better the secondary is this year,” defensive end Jared Allen said. “The Packers run a double-pass trick play with Rodgers throwing the ball deep, and Harrison reads it and makes an interception (in tight coverage). The last time they ran that play on us, it went 70 yards for a touchdown.”

To understand how far the Vikings secondary has come requires a look at just how depleted and awful it was a year ago.

Antoine Winfield, Cedric Griffin and Chris Cook were the top three corners heading into the season. Winfield spent the last 11 weeks on injured reserve with a broken collarbone. Griffin tried to come back from torn anterior cruciate ligaments in both knees the previous two years, but was ineffective and eventually benched. And Cook was gone after six games, in exile as he fought felony domestic assault charges of which he was cleared after the season.

At safety, the Vikings had bit players with little instinct for the position. Tyrell Johnson, a second-round pick in 2008, had been a major draft bust and was on injured reserve with a torn hamstring. Husain Abdullah, a former special-teamer who wasn’t drafted, had become a starter, but ended the season on injured reserve with his second concussion. That left rookie sixth-round pick Mistral Raymond and Jamarca Sanford, an overachieving former seventh-round pick, to play the back end.

It wasn’t pretty. Despite a league-high 50 sacks, the Vikings allowed opponents to complete 68.2 percent of their passes for 4,361 yards, 34 touchdowns and a franchise-record worst 107.6 passer rating. In NFL history, only the 2008 Lions team that went 0-16 allowed a worse opponent passer rating (110.9).

The Vikings also tied a franchise record for fewest interceptions (eight) while setting an NFL record for consecutive games without an interception (nine).

“I didn’t know about 'The Streak,’ ” Smith said. “But I’ve heard people talk about how bad things got. I really don’t want to know how bad it got. That was last year.”

At least someone enjoyed the Vikings’ secondary last year. Rodgers and fellow NFC North quarterbacks Matthew Stafford and Jay Cutler went 5-0 against the Vikings while completing 72.3 percent of their passes for 1,457 yards, 13 touchdowns, no interceptions and an average passer rating of 125.3.

Then there was Drew Brees. In the Saints’ 42-20 rout at the Metrodome in Week 15, Brees played just 47 minutes before leaving as the first player in NFL history to throw for 400 yards (412) and five touchdowns without an interception while completing 80 percent (32 of 40) of his passes.

“I watched it at home,” Winfield said. “It was embarrassing.” Frazier cringes every time last year’s secondary is mentioned.

“There were several games where you’d just shake your head because I knew we could be better but you felt handicapped,” he said. “You felt hand-cuffed because of what we had in the secondary.

“And being a guy who has coached DBs and played DB (for the Bears in the mid-1980s), it was hard. But I also understood where we were. The next thing for me was how do we fix it so it never happens again.”

It didn’t take long for training camp observers to notice that Smith had the kind of instincts not seen in a Vikings safety since Darren Sharper left after the 2008 season. It also didn’t take long to see Smith plays with a level of nastiness that wasn’t seen in Sharper or any other Vikings’ safety in a long, long time.

One particular play in training camp stood out and will be re-told for years if Smith continues on his current path toward stardom.

Veteran receiver Percy Harvin, the team’s second-best player and an established NFL star, was breaking through a line of defenders and growing more and more agitated as each one raked at the ball. A fierce competitor with the most volatile temper on the team, Harvin shoved and yelled at the rookie safety who had dared to keep going after the ball when Harvin had already expressed his anger toward the situation.

What came next caught everyone off-guard. Smith not only didn’t back down to the respected veteran, he went after Harvin.

“That whole Percy thing got blown out of proportion,” Smith said late in the regular season. “It was just two competitive guys on the football field. After it happened, we were cool.

“To me, I just really didn’t think about it. I was just playing football. If that’s how people took it, that I wasn’t afraid to take on the veteran, I guess that’s a good thing. I think it was just a football deal.”

Smith’s teammates and coaches took notice.

“Obviously, we talked about it and made sure to say, 'Hey, man, take it easy on Percy. He’s Percy,’ ” defensive backs coach Joe Woods said. “But the bottom line is he was a rookie who came in very confident with a lot of swagger. That’s what you have to have in the back end. And to see him at that point to get into it with Percy told me a lot about the person he was from a football standpoint.”

The attitude continued when the real hitting began. He was fined for one vicious hit and thrown out of a game and fined when he shoved an official. He apologized for shoving the official and vowed that it will never happen again. But as far as changing his aggressiveness toward the opposition, he’s only vowed to keep playing as hard as ever against whomever he faces.

“I’m just here to play football for the Vikings,” he said. “Whatever happens on the football field, I never say or think to myself, 'Oh, that’s so and so. That’s Calvin Johnson. I can’t cover Calvin Johnson. I can’t hit Calvin Johnson.’ You just have to go out and play and love the game.”

On Sunday, the Vikings kept their playoff hopes high when they went to Houston and upset the Texans, 23-6. It was the fewest points the Vikings had allowed since a 24-3 win over the Falcons in the 2007 season opener. It also was the first time the Texans had failed to score a touchdown in Matt Schaub’s Texans career.

And guess who was front and center for the defensive manhandling. That's right: Smith.

He had a team-high seven tackles. All of them solo. He had a strip sack that the Vikings recovered. He made a tackle inside the 1-yard line that led to the team’s dramatic goal line stand. He also stuffed a receiver inches short of the first-down marker on third-and-three from the Texans’ 8-yard line.

He also was flagged for roughing the passer on a play that shows his reputation as a physical player is growing. The hit wasn’t late. There was no helmet-to-helmet contact. In fact, Smith used his shoulder to hit Schaub in the chest.

“I thought it was a clean hit,” Smith said. “I guess that’s just how it goes when you play defense in an offense’s league. I’m just playing as hard as I can play, and that’s what I’m going to keep doing. That’s how I play.

“I’m not trying to play dirty or hit anybody illegally. I’m going to play hard. Always.”

Three snaps later, Smith got a sack and a forced fumble when he ran down backup QB T.J. Yates from behind.

“I was mad they called a penalty, so I hit him pretty good,” Smith said. “So I’m going to keep coming.”